I’m going to København (again) in a few days so I decided to try how well I can do on Danish Duolingo. On the placement test I managed to clear 14 skills and advance to level 6. Most of the time just using Norwegian as an answer was a clear win. A few pointers:

Getting used to spelling can be tricky but there seem to be “rules” such as a p in Norwegian is often a b in Danish, an e becomes an æ, etc.

It is pretty much cheating, but setting a Danish keyboard on the iPhone corrects spelling on the go.

Also, Duolingo often accepts words when only one letter is different, writing it off as a typo.

Duolingo can be criticised for teaching its own logic, which once you’re familiar with can help a lot in solving the problems.

Soon enough the complaints started about how much more limited the offering is compared to the US and the utter lack of localisation. Sure enough, at the moment Netflix offers its library in English only with English subtitles. Seeing how the average Hungarian even frowns at subtitles instead of dubbing, this might be a blocker issue for most of the country’s population.

In a report called Special Eurobarometer 386 the EU has measured the Europeans’ attitudes to foreign languages. The percentage of Hungarians who can hold a conversation in English is the absolute lowest among the member states at a shocking 20%.

I personally think watching tv in the target language is a great way to learn and this is a welcome opportunity for everyone wanting to do so. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that most people here will continue pirating tv shows and movies and will keep on crying for subs on torrent sites.

You know, like, pointless classes, or whatever. And basically tomorrow’s like the same, and the day after. Actually, all we’re like looking forward to is, like, new episodes of, like, TV shows. Totally Like Whatever.